| Mind Your Dancers |
May 12, 2008 11:41 pm
Mood: Shaking My Head, 680 Views | One of the dangers of travelling around the world dancing and teaching is the unscrupulous people who will try to screw you over.
It happens all the time.
You are, usually, alone in a foreign land and the only contacts you have are the organisers. Typically, they plan everything while you are there. Your meals, your accommodations, your transportation, your performances, your classes, your fee ...
People in the entertainment business are notoriously unreliable and dishonest. Generally. You have to fight for your due each gig and always have to be on guard.
Still, you expect a certain mark of respect and professional courtesy when dealing with another fellow dancer. After all, you both have suffered at the hands of untrustworthy organisers, disrespectful clients and ill-intentioned managers.
You expect another dancer to treat you better.
Wrong.
Today, my jaw hit the ground when I was speaking with another dancer. She told me a very famous - in fact, the most popular male dancer currently - had been bitching about his last gig.
I was there. I knew something was up with I bumped into him just half an hour before his performance and he was languidly eating his dinner and smoking at another restaurant. When I asked him if he was not going to his performance venue, he made a rude snort and dismissed the idea.
Since I had paid rather pricey tickets to watch his performance, I was a little concerned but knowing his temperament, I let it go and proceeded to the venue.
He did not show up for another two hours, prompting the organiser/dancer to fly into a panic and persistently beg me to help her buy time and perform a couple of dances while she tried to locate him.
I am a real softie. I despise the woman but I still helped her out even though I was a paying guest and was not dressed for performing nor had any of my music. I did not tell her where her star dancer was though as I did not want to get involved in whatever squabbles they were indulging in.
So, obviously something had transpired that afternoon between them. By the way, the organiser/dancer was the infamous Z.
Today, someone told me that Z had not paid our pissed off male dancer for all the dance performances he did. Not at another restaurant a few nights prior nor for that dinner dance show.
How is this possible?
Even the rankest amateur will be paid a few hundred dollars for performing, what more the current rage of the dance world?
The gossip was that he had been paid only for the workshops but not for his performances. I logically concluded that he would have been paid for the dinner dance show as that was a highly-marketed, ticketed event and the accounting and taxation would be a real problem if she didn't. But she could have screwed him on the restaurant performances.
The male star is apparently so peeved that he has been complaining and shredding Z's reputation all over the dance world. There is a large festival coming up where all the international dancers will congregate and it is expected that he will lead the charge to revile Z's treatment of him.
Apparently, aside from screwing him over financially, she had not arranged for anyone to take care of him during his gig with her. No meals. No minders - well, there was one but she was apparently always absent. No transportation.
It seems to me he was more angry at the disrespect shown to him than the non-payment for a couple of performances. Dancers have a lot of pride. We expect to be feted and taken care of by the host/hostess. To neglect this is a mark of utmost disrespect.
Being in the biz for so long, Z should have known better. She should also have known that a gay male dancer would be bitchy enough to go around maligning her all over the world now.
I would feel sorry for her except that she has pissed me off one time too many.
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| Hats Off To The Barmiest |
May 12, 2008 9:59 pm
Mood: shocked, 640 Views |  | She set a sartorial fashion statement in Sex and the City and became the It Girl for a long time. But that was in the past when her quirky fashion faux pas were viewed with impish delight and indulgent affection.
Now that SATC is no longer the phenomenon it was, her discordant sense of style is not as winning as before.
The media annihilated her latest foray into fashion fugue.
Ms Parker, this is not Ascot. I have not seen anything as ridiculous since Camilla Parker-Bowles sauntered out of church with the denuded feathers and nest of some probably-now-extinct- bird.
Her name was Sarah
She was an It Girl
With hollow flowers in her cap
And a dress blown out to there
She would malinger and do the fracas
And while she hang on to her star
Everyone just stayed afar
At the Gabra*, Gabracabana
The clueless spot north of Rodeo
At the Gabra, Gabracabana
Carrie and tacky were always off-fashion
At the Gabra ... she lost her mind
*Gabra means clueless
I rather like the woman and think she might be a genuinely nice person but someone really needs to knock some fashion sense into her.
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6 Comments | |
